Adrift

While Kendrick Lamar performed “Humble,” during his Super Bowl halftime set and was surrounded by dancers clad in red, white and blue—and in the process assumed the formation of the American flag (choreographed by Charm La’Donna)—so, too, did Faye Driscoll use performers who created slews of shapes/sculptures in her astonishing work, “Weathering,” seen at REDCAT on February 8, the last of three sold-out performances.

Performance

Faye Driscoll: “Weathering”

Place

REDCAT, Los Angeles, California, February 8, 2025

Words

Victoria Looseleaf

Faye Driscoll's “Weathering.” Photograph by Maria Baranova

The 70-minute piece, which premiered in 2023 at New York Live Arts (one of the work’s commissioners), takes place on and around a kind of bouncy mattress-platform-life raft (designed by Jake Margolin and Nick Vaughan), and could be likened to an episode of “Survivor.” Indeed, as the 10 dancers continuously morphed into an array of mind-boggling shapes—what Driscoll termed “a multi-sensory flesh sculpture surging through the Anthropocene”—one not only mused about their safety, but also, about climate change, the term ‘weathering,’ a process of wearing or deterioration of rocks, soils and minerals, and also signifying long-term health deterioration.

With the audience surrounding the dancers, who were clad in Karen Boyer’s street clothes—sneakers, jackets, mini-skirts, frayed cut-offs—the performers entered individually, taking their places on the “set,” and having uttered such words as “teeth,” “skin,” “mouth” and the like, with tech lingo—“algorithm”—also part of the script. But once positioned on the mattress, the dancers could have been a 21st century Hieronymus Bosch work come to [still] life, their barely perceptible moves stretching time as if a Butoh performance.

In truth, time did seem suspended, as their tableaux, which featured, among other postures, cocked heads, bent knees and agonizingly strange body bends, proved hypnotic, with shades of Leutze’s 1851 painting, Washington Crossing the Delaware coming to mind (a triumphal stance). Seriously, this slowing down of time was a prelude to the scherzo/accelerando movements to come.

Enter several stagehands (part of the Driscoll crew, including the choreographer herself), who began moving the mattress, the dancers having to steady their ground while also continuing their now-increasingly speedy actions, at the same time getting sprayed with a scented water. First-row audience members were also treated (?) to this immersive experience—think John Waters’ “Smell-O-Vision”—as the performers launched into a shedding-of-material items’ act.

Faye Driscoll's “Weathering.” Photograph by Maria Baranova

Yes, off came the layered garb, including coats, caps, stockings and socks, while the auditory track also accentuated the visceral quality of the work: The performers’ grunts and whimpers could have been mistaken for puppies wailing (heard by dint of five hanging microphones, with one temporarily seized by Jo Warren, as well as contact mics nestled somewhere in the mattress), with Sophia Brous credited with sound and music direction, and Ryan Gamblin and Guillaume Soula responsible for live sound and field recordings, respectively.

In one instance, a pouf of talcum powder was released, while small vignettes of oddball actions played out: Cory Seals peeled and slurped/dribbled on an orange, Amy Gernux (also Driscoll’s choreographic assistant) savored a strawberry, and herbs (parsley, perhaps?) were scattered about in this sculpturally orgiastic story that featured many fingers in mouths (intimacy coordination by Yehuda Duenyas), with a shaved-headed Jennifer Nugent shedding both her glasses and lacy bra.

Also among the props was a thick, nautical-like rope, while yoga breaths were amplified, ultimately becoming howls. And did we mention that there was, well, plenty of sweat?

Meanwhile, the mattress, spinning with the ferocity that only a carousel operator on acid could conjure, continued to rotate, with some of the dancers, including Kara Brody pushing the “prop” as if her life depended on it (and why wouldn’t it?), with other cast members—Carlo Antonio Villanueva, Maya LaLiberté, Mykel Marai Nairne, James Barrett, jumping off the “set,” only to vault back onto it again.

Caution: This daredevilry should not be tried at home!

Faye Driscoll's “Weathering.” Photograph by Maria Baranova

It was as if the inmates were running the asylum in this Olympian endeavor. Or did they know something that we onlookers didn’t? Undoubtedly! And speaking of asylums, Amanda K. Ringger’s lighting design was always teed up, so to speak, on “high”—the brightness accentuating the frenzied, albeit highly choreographed, moves, ensuring that we onlookers were able to take in the sight of this company in all of its glory.

In one scene, the action radiated Kubrickian vibes, calling to mind his 1968 masterpiece, 2001: A Space Odyssey, particularly towards the end of “The Dawn of Man” segment where one of the apes realizes a bone can be used as a tool: Here, the life raft, now sprinkled with dirt, becomes a source of safety, while at the same time also suggesting fragility, spawning a new category of movement amid these catastrophe adjacent terpsichores!

Flowers were also strewn about (the stagehands were quick to swoop in and pick up the tossed items, including a credit card holder and keys), and, resembling an earth goddess, Mykel Marai Nairne, off-raft, was actually, well, vaping. As the soundscape grew louder, the theater, too, seemed to be an echo chamber, and amid the bedlam was Miguel Alejandro Castillo, who’d gone from fully clad to completely nude, careening off the “set” and coming perilously close to the audience. And with the mattress itself having been moved, front row attendees got up close and personal with the dancers, who, at one point, were lying/crawling around the floor.

Ah, but since the program notes warned that the piece “contains nudity and loud sounds,” with “limited amounts of essential oils [being] used within the show” (dramaturgy and scent design—?—by Dages Juvelier Keates), this writer was prepared. Or so she thought! After all, how does one prepare for a work that is both so disconcerting and yet so deeply enthralling, so wild and yet so contained, so far-reaching and yet so intimate?

The answer is simple: One does not! There can be no preparation, except to open one’s heart and mind to the possibility of having a life-altering experience that a dance such as Driscoll’s “Weathering” could—and did—provide.

Victoria Looseleaf

Victoria Looseleaf is an award-winning, Los Angeles-based international arts journalist who covers music and dance festivals around the world. Among the many publications she has contributed to are the Los Angeles Times, the New York Times, Dance Magazine and KCET’s Artbound. In addition, she taught dance history at USC and Santa Monica College. Looseleaf’s novella-in-verse, Isn't It Rich? is available from Amazon, and and her latest book, Russ & Iggy’s Art Alphabet with illustrations by JT Steiny, was recently published by Red Sky Presents. Looseleaf can be reached through X, Facebook, Instagram and Linked In, as well as at her online arts magazine ArtNowLA.

comments

Melanie Rios Glaser February 13, 2025

Hi Victoria, I was sitting across you at that performance, watching you take notes and looking forward to what you would write. Thank you for so accurately lending words to what I experienced. It was magnificent!

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